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railroad went north through Cheyenne and business leaders in Denver,. seeing money slipping through their fingers, quickly organized themselves to build a branch line to Cheyenne. Two million dollars was raised and the line, the Denver Pacific, was finally opened in June, 1870. Two months later the Kansas Pacific arrived in Denver from the east. Now Denver was strategically located to take advantage of its contact with eastern and pacific markets and become the supply center for the Rocky Mountain region. In concert with the railroads, Denver extended mining's dominance of the Colorado economy up until the early 1900's by causing every factor in the production of precious metals to go down (Abbott, 1976). The expense of shipping machinery to the mines plunged, the prevailing wage rate went down as a larger labor pool became available, the price of food, clothing and other supplies dropped 30 to 50 percent from 1864 levels, and the cost of fuel was sharply reduced. The savings on freight bills alone in the first years of railroad development may have been as much as $3.5 million annually (Abbott, 1976). This meant mills and smelters could operate profitably,on poorer ores. The railroads opened up all regions of Colorado and they did it quickly. Between 1873 and 1893, 204 distinct articles of incorporation for railroad companies were filed in the State (Aydelott, 1959). Not every railroad got into operation, but many did. At least 20 were operating in Colorado by the mid-1880's. Between 1870 and 1890, Colorado's rail mileage increased from 155 miles to 4616 miles (Mahar, 1963); it reached a high of 5,739 miles in 1914 (Dorsett, 1986). Among the more important railroads, the Colorado Central, organized by political rivals of the Denver Pacific's owners and in competition with them, opened up the Front Range mining district in 1877 by extending its narrow gage rails to Blackhawk, Central City, Idaho Springs, Georgetown and Silver Plume. The Denver, South Park and Pacific completed a line from Denver to Buena Vista in 1879, opening the South Park area for development. The Denver and Salt Lake City, although failing to reach Salt Lake, made it possible to extract coal from the rich fields in Routt and Moffat counties. The Union Pacific, running from Cheyenne to Rawlins, provided the impetus for cattlemen to run stock on the grasses in the northern part of the State by providing a market for meat in the form of their own rail crews and by providing transportation to stockyards in the midwest. Perhaps the most famous of the early railroads was the Denver and Rio Grande--the quintessential Colorado railroad. Between 1878 and 1883 it laid almost 1500 miles of track. Its main track went from Denver, through Colorado Springs and Pueblo, down to La Veta (near Trinidad). One trunk line ran over La Veta Pass to Durango, with spurs connecting Silverton, South Fork and Espanola. Another, running from Pueblo to Salt Lake City and Ogden, provided transportation to Western Slope communities and had branches to the mines in Crested Butte and Leadville. The Denver and Rio Grande builcers were single-handedly responsible for creating the towns of Alamosa, Garland City, and La Veta; they made the city of Pueblo into an important steel and iron city with a manufacturing output of steel products, especially iron rails, that rivaled Denver's in the early 1900's (Abbott, 1976). Manufacturing was also prospering during the latter half of the 19th century, due primarily to the mining industry. As placer mining played out at the end of the Civil War, miners were forced to turn to more difficult lode - 3 -